Upper Intermediate - Graduation Party

Hola Equipo SpanishPod
En la página de Ejercicios, solo puedo ver los primeros tres ejercicios.
Gracias

Hola stevestrv,

Eché un vistazo a los ejercicios, y para mí sí sirven.  Puede ser que la conección.  Se debe aparecer un scroll bar al lado derecho de los exercicios para revelar hasta el número seis.

Hola JP

Creo que es un problema con Firefax 3.  Voy a experimentar y mandar un correo electrónico a Leo.

En vez de Si somos las más populares del escuela puedo decir Si fueramos...?

Tambien, en lugar de Dijo que encantado puedo decir Dijo que estaría encantado?

missworldtraveler

If you say si fueramos las más populares del escuela, the use of the imperfect subjective of ser means that it is contrary to fact, in other words they are not the most popular in the school.  I know I am not very clear but here is a typical example.

Si yo fuera tu, me iría ahora mismo.  If you were you I would live right now.  Clary I am not you.

You can also use the imperfect subjective to exper something very hypothetical

Si yo ganara al lotería compraría un carro Nuevo. If I were to win the lottery, I would buy a new car.

Steve,

I find it hard to "handle" even as I did when studying English grammar so many years ago. These words we play with are so small, nimble and sharp. Those huge (blaughwagic blugdunktive) descriptive handles hobble them, and make then hard to recognize.

missworldtraveler stevestrv

it seems to me that what is being said here is:

we ARE the most popular in school (after all)

I think the tooltip for Si translating as if is just plain wrong. i cant see a counterfactual sentence that makes any sense.

IF we are the most popular doesnt mean anything in isolation like this either (to me anyway) and in addition its not punctuated as a question. 

"if we are the most popular in the school, how come no one has asked us to dance?"

would work (i think) but i cant see how else you square IF and ARE being next to each other like this.

The PDF transcript does not say "if".  The si should have an accent over it because it emphasizes the seguro que sí from the previous sentence.

Pues, eso is lo que pienso yo.

kikuyu missworldtraveler donperigo

I total agree with kikuyu, and belive that it should be written Sí somos las más populares de la escuela.

Donperigo

I think that the tooltip is correct "si" means if, but the word in the diolog should be "sí " with an accent mark.

No guys, I don't agree. A similar use of "si=if" there's in Italian too. It's like the girls said:

If we are, and sure we are, the most popular girls in the school, how could they not to invite us...?

Fabrizio

Interesting. Thank you for your comment.

Thanks Steve. I don't know if the sentence I wrote above make any sense in English, but sure it works in Spanish or in Italian... :-) I'll try to make an example in Spanish:

A - Tengo miedo que no pasaré el examen...

B - ¡¿Qué dices?! Si eres el más listo... (sobrentendido algo como: como puedes pensar esto?)

Fabrizio

I think that we are having trouble with this becouse we don't use "if" like that in English.

Thank you for your imput.

kikuyu
you had me worried but my tooltip definitely says "if" :-)
im glad we agree on the translation, im a bit out of my league here in upper intermediate.

stevestrv
I take your point. They have used the wrong si, complete with an inapropriate but correct for si translation. :-)

fabrizio
as i said above you probably "can" make si work in this way  but there are no question marks in the dialogue. i think its just a bug/feature/test :-)

stevestrv again :-)

how about

if you are wondering why i asked.....or
so, if you are all ready to go then...

Wow guys . . . “monolithic tyranny of gossip.”  ¡Que poesía!

fabrizio

after a bit more thought i dont suppose you would need question marks for a "statement" like

if you think you've heard the last of me you're very much mistaken.
or
if you can't say anything nice dont say anything at all
or even....

(wow,) If "we" arent the most popular girls in school

theyre not really questions but start with if. very interesting :-)

cant help thinking that this would involve the subjunctive in spanish though ie not Somos. gosh i can hardly wait
is you is or is you aint a question?

go on then fab, ill take a piece of that. i think everybody is right except the sentence :-)

shanghai should be coming on line in a few hours and we can find out

don, there's no question mark, because it's right this way, no question mark needed. In fact, it can introduce a question, but it's not a question itself. I'm ready to bet that the sentence is perfectly right, no bug/feature/test at all...

;-)

donperigo, I posted the message above before to read your last comment.

don

if youre quick you can edit it and confuse the bejeebers out of future readers :-)

thanks all for a thoroughly entertanining evening now i gotta eat and go to bed. night night

Fabrizio, Estás listo a apostar?  Qué te apuestas?  Estoy bromeando. No me atrevo apostar contigo. Sería demasiado riesgoso. Solo lo me recordé de otro lección aquí.  :)

Tengo que hacer una corrección.  Quería decir:

Estás listo para apostar?

Wow, nothing gets past the SpanishPod community! 

Ok, let's roll up our sleeves...

What we have here is a punctuation-induced culture clash. 

The original sentence is: 

¡Seguro que sí, a quién más va a invitar! Si somos las más populares de la escuela.

Of course, who else is he going to invite? We are the most popular people in school.

Now, as you know, the popups give you a literal gloss; when I translate the English, I am often faced with the dilema of how to translate in the most helpful way.  Almost always, I tend to choose the way that sounds most natural to my American English, as a native speaker of American English might say it. 

That way, the learner has the information three ways:  1) the original Spanish 2) the popup gloss, and 3) a version in 'natural' English.  When there are conceptual gaps between the three things, it's up to the learner to ask the question and to theorize, which is exactly what you all are doing.  

And this process leads to learning.  Ah!  :)

Ok, here's the punctuation-induced culture clash...  I think we can illustrate it with an alternative translation (note the punctuation): 

Surely indeed!  Who else is he going to invite, if we are the most popular girls in school? 

So now we see that we have a classic if-then construction, which is if + present tense, then + future. 

I think a lot of us were thrown off course not only by my translation choice, but also by the punctuation choices in the Spanish.  Remember the punctuation in the dialogs reflects spoken speech; it will differ from standard literary norms.

So JP, why didn't you give us the red translation above in the first place?  It would have saved us a lot of grief!

Meh, because it didn't sound natural to me. Besides, look at all the great learning that happened!

(at this point, my students would glare at me and curse me bitterly under their breath.)  

Que interesante, la discusion que se puede tener sobre una palabra tan corta y común! 

Sobre las "prom nights", todavia recuerdo la emoción y la presión por sola una noche.  Ahora no recuerdo mucho de la noche, solo que toda la acumulación hasta la noche fue mas importante que el evento actual.

kikuyu

apuesto diez latitas de comida para gatos. ;-)

fabrizio says
If we are, and sure we are, the most popular girls in the school, how could they not to invite us...?

MACBETH If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: . . . act1scn7

cobre ixne on the acbethme, es mala surete :-)

seguro que quisiste decir la drama escocés.

it strikes me that pig latin works a bit like reflexive verbs

kikuyu. have just looked at the pdf transcript and it is as you said. sorry, i misunderstood your post because ive never looked at the pdf before. i didnt realise there was a translation provided.

fabrizio it would seem you are right though i suspect it cost you a couple of tins of catfood to get jp to change his story:-)

mmm, catfood...

You don't know the dude, don. If you don't bring at least a six-pack, you can't neither start to talk...

Hola a todos!

Se puede preguntar que cancion tenemos en el dialogo?

Gracias!

alma, ha ha I didn't know anyone actually read our intros!  ; )

I am quite disturbed that I may have similar taste in music as teenage girls.

Rosa Pastel by Belanova:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylWpfylH3XQ

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Q_RjqXwaA

Hablando de comida para gatos, noté que J.P. está haciendo el miau/meow sonido en los podcasts. 

A veces es poco fácil saber si /si/ sí quiere decir sí o si, ¿o no es así?

Sometimes it's not easy to tell whether /si/ actually means yes or if, don't you think?

Hoy escuché a este diálogo y es muy evidente que el “si” en “si somos las mas populares” significa “if” porque no hay énfasis en el sonido vocal. Ayer cuando yo estuvé tan segura de mí misma, había basado mi opinión sólo de haber leído el diálogo y la transcripción PDF. De todas maneras estaba un gran discusión. ¡Gracias a todos!

Today I listened to this dialogue and it is very obvious that the "si" in "somos las mas populares" means "if" because there is no emphasis on the vowel.  Yesterday when I was so sure of myself, I had based my opinion from only having read the dialogue and the PDF transcript.  But it sure was a great discussion!

SpanishPod Team.
I am sure that one might say:
“Creo que Jon está en la sala pero no estoy seguro”
and not
“Creo que Jon esté en la sala pero no estoy seguro”
even though there is doubt.
Is there logic behind this or is this something we just have to except or am I wrong and esté is correct.

Thank you for all your help.

stevestrv,

The logic is that when you use "creer" in Spanish, you're not expressing doubt.

This is hard for us, because in English we have two kinds of "think," one unstressed, and one stressed.

Unstressed:  I think she's pretty. (no doubt is expressed; speaker is really expressing certainty).

Stressed:  I think she's pretty.  (doubt is expressed, speaker is not sure if she's pretty)

Spanish speakers only use "creer" to express certainty; i.e., only to correspond with the unstressed version above.  If the want to express non-certainty, they will not use "creer." 

An interesting side note:  you can use the verb "creerse" to mean "to mistakenly believe."  Because this expresses the speaker's opinion as well as the opinion of the subject, it's going to trigger the subjunctive: 

Este se cree que ella sea bonita.  This dude mistakenly believes that she is pretty. 

JP

Thank very much for you answer.  I am still a little  confused because I think that the sentence “Creo que Jon está en la sala pero no estoy seguro” is possible in Spanish.

Also thank you for the point about creerse.  I think that you mentioned it on one of the lessons but I had forgotten it. 

Steve

stevestrv,

ha ha, yes, that sentence is possible.  In the "creo que" clause, the speaker is using "creer" and therefore expressing certainty, and then when she says "no estoy seguro" he is expressing uncertainty. 

Remember, grammatical logic is different than formal theoretical logic.  Grammatial systems only have to be "logical" to the extent that meaning gets conveyed.  If the end result is a theoretical contradiction, that's irrelevant to the grammar! 

If our commucation were limited to only things that were theoretically logical in the formal sense, then I know some folks who would never speak....

JP 

Thank you again.  This is pretty heavy, grammatical logic verse theoretical logic. 

all indians join indio group

Quiero senalar que hay algo que no funciona con la traduccion  de la ultima frase con encantador en el expansion.

Buena leccion!  Gracias!

Great lesson guys!

And is that belanova playing in the girls bedroom...

nice!

Wow Hypersport! Good ear!! Yes its Belanova! We really like this group! The song is Niño.

Hola Lili, adivina? Ya soy un upperintermediate! Pues, quien sabe, pero estoy muy orgulloso que ahora puedo entender estas lecciones que hace various mezes no puedo entender ni una sola palabra! Es increible! te agredexco mucho. 

Cualquier manera, solo quiero decir que yo tambien me gusta belanova- pero creo que ese cancion esta llamada Rosa Pastel, no? Ademas, si ud quiere Belanova, check out Julieta Venega. Ambos son similar y bueno. Nos vemos!